


Your constant satellite

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Chess, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a pattern he just stumbles through blindly, loving him and willing that to be enough to lead them through what he cannot quantify or chart out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your constant satellite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eudaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/gifts).



> Written for [](http://eudaimon.livejournal.com/profile)[**eudaimon**](http://eudaimon.livejournal.com/)'s birthday, which is/was today... though it was finished a week ago. Specifically, she asked for: _Chekov on an away mission and the things Sulu says to him over the comms before he goes to sleep. Double meanings, things unsaid and implied. And maps. Something to do with maps._ I'm not sure how well I pulled this off. We're also going to pretend my titles don't fail. Though, yes, it's a reference to Vienna Teng's "Gravity". Many, many thanks to [](http://fringedweller.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fringedweller.livejournal.com/)**fringedweller** for the beta :D

Away missions are always hard on them. When Hikaru goes, Pavel paces, turning possibilities over in his head at twice the tempo of the chess piece he turns over in his hand, waiting for him to come back and make his move. Hikaru is the one who leaves more often, his combat skills needed far more often than Pavel’s brilliant, quick-thinking mind. So more often it is Pavel left worrying on the _Enterprise_ while Hikaru is fighting off Klingon invaders and exposed to the varying dangers of the universe.

When Pavel goes, so much less often, and commonly on scientific missions of exploration, they try to act like nothing’s changed. Hikaru misses him just the same as when Pavel is the one missing him, worries just the same as Pavel does, even though there’s significantly less for him to fret over. Hikaru is the one pacing, clutching chess pieces when he should be moving them across the board set up in his quarters, where they continue their ongoing game of chess every night, even over the communicators when Pavel is gone. They never have time to play when Hikaru is on his missions, something Pavel never forgets. When Pavel isn’t fighting off his own dangers, they play and pretend they’re back on the ship together.

Pavel Chekov is as much a tactician as he is a navigator, a map-maker, someone who sees the world and understands the way it works well enough to walk through it and lead others along; someone who not only knows the names of all the stars and their place in the sky, but the patterns they’re allowed to follow and the way to avoid them. It’s chess on a much grander, more complex scale. He only ever has to close his eyes and remember the patterns and rhythms of the universe, to map out the best way through it. He knows the available moves for every star in the quadrant, every system and its planets, just the same as he knows queens, knights and pawns.

Hikaru isn’t rational and systematically ruled by rules and limitations. He doesn’t have a cheat sheet or a map or a rule book. He’s _human_ and ever-shifting, bending the rules of existence, but Pavel knows his routines well enough. He knows how he likes his coffee (heavy on the sugar, light on the cream) and his eggs (boiled, the white entirely cooked and the yolk soft, never slimy), and that he always waters his plants before going on shift. Pavel knows the routines he likes to follow while practicing his fencing, the ones that stretch his muscles and push him hard enough that it doesn’t matter that he hasn’t had a fencing partner in years. He knows that he likes his pillows soft and his showers hot enough to scald. He likes to fuck slow and thorough but he likes to be fucked hard, which is good because Pavel never has the patience to go as slowly as Hikaru does. He knows these things as easily as he knows anything else, and knows just as well that he only knows them for what may only be a fleeting moment in time, because Hikaru Sulu changes and warps and isn’t compulsively bound to the routines he sets for himself.

He is a navigator, a tactician, and he tries to understand the universe and the place and pattern of every single thing in it. He doesn’t understand Hikaru even though they follow a pseudo-routine together. He wakes up with Hikaru, showers and dresses and reports to the bridge with him, and goes through the same routines every day with Hikaru as his constant satellite, or he as his, circling one another at a constant rate. It’s a pattern he just stumbles through blindly, loving him and willing that to be enough to lead them through what he cannot quantify or chart out. It violates who he is, the parts of him that need to understand if not control, but with Hikaru he doesn’t feel the need to understand. It’s instinctual and human, unplanned and illogical, but he loves him and is loved by him. He is a navigator in love, and all that means is that he’s happily lost his way completely.

Today, on this mission, he isn’t a tactician. He’s a navigator and a cartographer, making the maps that other navigators will follow later, and he’s alone. He wasn’t alone to start with, when he came down with the landing party, but Captain Kirk and Commander Spock needed to visit a set of ruins already sketched on Pavel’s map, and so he took a communicator, a survival pack and a sketchbook, and set out on his own after reassuring them that he would check in with the _Enterprise_ at least every two hours.

Three days in, when Lieutenant Uhura steps away from the communications console at night and Mr. Scott redirects his communications to Hikaru’s personal console, his check-ins last at least as long as the increments he’s supposed to check in at. It’s the only time he gets to talk to Hikaru and he doesn’t take even a second of it for granted, knowing this is a luxury afforded to him by the crew’s benevolence to them.

“Knight to A-eight.”

There’s a pause over the connection, and then Hikaru curses into his communicator. “How the _hell_ do you do that?”

“Check, I believe,” Pavel responds as cheerily as he can while damp with the planet’s nighttime humidity, fumbling with the fire-starter from his pack.

Hikaru huffs indignantly and Pavel smiles to himself while he tries to figure out his next move. He knows that Hikaru is leaning over the physical board, a hand pulling at his hair in frustration, because it’s what he does when they play in his room. He can see him as clearly as he sees the board in his mind’s eye when he closes his physical eyes, imagining his next move, predicting exactly how Hikaru will move next and what move he will take then. Pavel thinks about letting him win a game, just once, but Hikaru would know immediately and want to play again, _Fairly this time, Pavel._

He lets Hikaru think that he keeps up with the game on his PADD, but he knows the board better than the backs of his own hands, better even than the ridges and valleys on Hikaru’s smooth palms when they stroke over his cheeks, down his freckled back and settle on the curve of his ass. He sees the board, sees Hikaru’s next move (assuredly king to C-six), and sees two moves to checkmate.

Sure enough, Hikaru’s voice breaks through the humming static on his communicator, “King to C-six.”

“Queen to G-two,” Pavel shoots back immediately and his next word, an equally chipper _check_ , is lost among Hikaru’s frustrated groan.

“So, when I tell you that I’m moving my king to B-six, you’ll just tell me—”

“You cannot make that move, Hikaru,” Pavel cuts him off, thinking of his knight, sitting at A-eight, poised to take down the king, should the white queen fail. “But yes, when you tell me you’ll move your king to _D_ -six, I will move my queen to—”

“G-three, and—” Hikaru continues, the disbelieving moan not quite out of his voice as he finally sees Pavel’s carefully laid trap and how easily he fell straight into it.

“And then checkmate,” Pavel finishes for him and laughs at Hikaru’s curse.

“We’re not going to have a rematch,” Hikaru tells him grumpily, and Pavel can hear the sound of scattered chess pieces being collected back up and carefully put back to their stalemated positions on opposite sides of the board, waiting for Hikaru and Pavel to return and take them back up as soldiers in their friendly game of war. “Not tonight, anyway.”

Pavel hums in agreement, breathing a sigh of relief when the sparks from the device catch on the kindling and flare up with a small, weak flame. He blows on it gently and beams when it brightens, spreading quickly, burning higher and hotter until it starts to burn the wood Pavel collected just before contacting the _Enterprise_. “I miss you,” he breathes to Hikaru, unplanned and unexpected, the sentiment of his heart coming out of his mouth before he can stop it.

There’s a few seconds of static where Hikaru is holding his breath, and then he lets it out quickly. “I miss you, too. You’ll be back in two days.”

“Yes,” Pavel agrees and scoots away from the flame. There’s more he wants to say, but he keeps them silent and implied because he knows Hikaru understands them as if the two of them are twin strings set to thrum on the same frequency. There’s someone monitoring the connection, probably Riley working the communications switchboard, and so he keeps everything else to himself, letting the sentimentality hang stagnant on the line and speak for the rest of what he wants to say. Five days away is barely enough time to finish mapping out the region he’s been assigned, but it’s still more than he can go without the routine he’s so used to on the ship.

It’s disruptive and unpredictable when they’re apart. Pavel doesn’t like when he doesn’t understand his routine. He needs Hikaru like he knows Hikaru needs his tea before bed, before they climb overtop the covers and pretend like they’re going to fall asleep without fucking like they do every night. They try, every night they try, and every night Pavel threads his fingers through Hikaru’s hair and whispers that he loves him into his ear, and Hikaru skims his hands over his hips and it all just falls apart from there. They strip off their boxers and fascinate themselves with one another, as if they don’t already know every detail of one another, as if they haven’t memorized the patterns of what they each like and mapped out every sensitive patch of skin. Every night they do this, and every night they end up slick with sweat, hearts pounding against the skeletal cage of their ribs, beating out a rhythm in time to the other, reaching out as if they could touch a little closer if they could only beat a little faster, a little harder.

The silence is comfortable. Pavel closes his eyes and knows that Hikaru has done the same, each pretending this is the same routine they know. They follow the pattern in their minds, swirling around one another, going through the motions without moving at all, until finally Hikaru speaks again.

“We should sleep.”

“A minute longer,” Pavel tells him, just the same way he tells him every night when Hikaru wants to pull away from where he’s deep inside him, as close as they can possibly come together. He closes his eyes the way he does then, knows that Hikaru will breathe a soft sigh before it comes through on his communicator, delayed half a second.

Pavel takes in a breath and he’s there, Hikaru curled around him, satiated and sweaty from exertion and not the stifling, wet, tropical heat, exhausted because of the fuck instead of because of the long day following the winding river and its tributaries.

He lets it out and he’s back on the planet, back with two more days before the sun will set and he will finally be authorized to beam back to the _Enterprise_ and go back to following the same patterns and routines he has with Hikaru.

Another breath, and then: “Good night, Hikaru.”

“Good night,” Hikaru says gently, and Pavel knows he’s standing up, heading toward the bed alone, where he’ll curl around a pillow and sleep fitfully, back to worrying until he hears from Pavel again.

“Pawn to E-four,” he says to himself, and begins the routine anew.


End file.
